Funding for the development of EOL computable data functionality provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, and from EOL users around the world. Contact the EOL Secretariat for more information on TraitBank.

An area that is inundated or saturated by surface or ground water at a frequency and duration sufficient to support, and that under normal circumstances do support, a prevalence of vegetation typically adapted for life in saturated soil conditions.

An aquatic biome that comprises systems of open-ocean and unprotected coastal habitats, characterized by exposure to wave action, tidal fluctuation, and ocean currents as well as systems that largely resemble these. Water in the marine biome is generally within the salinity range of seawater: 30 to 38 ppt.

A linear shoaling landform feature within a body of water. Bars tend to be long and narrow (linear) and develop where a current (or waves) promote deposition of granular material, resulting in localized shallowing (shoaling) of the water. Bars can appear in the sea, in a lake, or in a river. They are typically composed of sand, although could be of any granular matter that the moving water has access to and is capable of shifting around (for example, soil, silt, gravel, cobble, shingle, or even boulders). The grain size of the material comprising a bar is related: to the size of the waves or the strength of the currents moving the material, but the availability of material to be worked by waves and currents is also important.

A sheet of saline water separated from the open sea by sand or shingle banks. The sheet of water between an offshore reef, especially of coral and mainland. The sheet of water within a ring or horseshoe shaped atoll.

Natural freshwater surface streams of considerable volume and a permanent or seasonal flow, moving in a definite channel toward a sea, lake, or another river; any large streams, or ones larger than brooks or creeks, such as the trunk stream and larger branches of a drainage system.

The separation between neighbouring drainage basins (catchments). In hilly country, the divide lies along topographical peaks and ridges, but in flat country or on a high plateau (especially where the ground is marshy) the divide may be invisible - just a more or less notional line on the ground on either side of which falling raindrops will start a journey to different rivers, and even to different sides of a country or continent.

The region occupied by any more or less continuous, directed movement of ocean water that flows in one of the Earth's oceans. Ocean Currents are rivers of hot or cold water within the ocean. The currents are generated from the forces acting upon the water like the earth's rotation, the wind, the temperature and salinity differences and the gravitation of the moon. The depth contours, the shoreline and other movements influence the direction and strength of the movements of water that forms a given current.

A linear shoaling landform feature within a body of water. Bars tend to be long and narrow (linear) and develop where a current (or waves) promote deposition of granular material, resulting in localized shallowing (shoaling) of the water. Bars can appear in the sea, in a lake, or in a river. They are typically composed of sand, although could be of any granular matter that the moving water has access to and is capable of shifting around (for example, soil, silt, gravel, cobble, shingle, or even boulders). The grain size of the material comprising a bar is related: to the size of the waves or the strength of the currents moving the material, but the availability of material to be worked by waves and currents is also important.

A sheet of saline water separated from the open sea by sand or shingle banks. The sheet of water between an offshore reef, especially of coral and mainland. The sheet of water within a ring or horseshoe shaped atoll.

An aquatic biome that comprises systems of open-ocean and unprotected coastal habitats, characterized by exposure to wave action, tidal fluctuation, and ocean currents as well as systems that largely resemble these. Water in the marine biome is generally within the salinity range of seawater: 30 to 38 ppt.

The region occupied by any more or less continuous, directed movement of ocean water that flows in one of the Earth's oceans. Ocean Currents are rivers of hot or cold water within the ocean. The currents are generated from the forces acting upon the water like the earth's rotation, the wind, the temperature and salinity differences and the gravitation of the moon. The depth contours, the shoreline and other movements influence the direction and strength of the movements of water that forms a given current.

Natural freshwater surface streams of considerable volume and a permanent or seasonal flow, moving in a definite channel toward a sea, lake, or another river; any large streams, or ones larger than brooks or creeks, such as the trunk stream and larger branches of a drainage system.

The separation between neighbouring drainage basins (catchments). In hilly country, the divide lies along topographical peaks and ridges, but in flat country or on a high plateau (especially where the ground is marshy) the divide may be invisible - just a more or less notional line on the ground on either side of which falling raindrops will start a journey to different rivers, and even to different sides of a country or continent.

An area that is inundated or saturated by surface or ground water at a frequency and duration sufficient to support, and that under normal circumstances do support, a prevalence of vegetation typically adapted for life in saturated soil conditions.